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Re: Mythical Six Week Build Season
Hmmm, On the one hand ...
If I'm FIRST and I want to inspire students, and pack a real-world-style engineering/science/technology challenge into a period that enhances a student's education, without losing sight of everything else important in students' lives ... I might decide that 44 days is plenty long enough for the students to enjoy & receive the benefits of the Strategy-to-Delivery, before-a-deadline, part of the experience.
Hopefully, as the teams mature, their students and their mentors will learn to set realistic goals for what they set out to accomplish each season during that 44-day period.
Hopefully, during those 44 days, those teams that are able, will fan out to cooperate with neighboring teams that struggle to be ready for the competition events.
On the other hand ...
If you call the program a "competition", and if you turn the competitions into showcases, and if you create a program that celebrates excellence, it would be a little myopic to not expect constant overt and subconscious pressure from teams, and from almost everyone else, to put excellent robots onto the fields.
My 2 cents ...
Focus on expanding participation in the program, not on expanding the time & resources the program consumes. The program's vision can be accomplished more easily if competition-creep is resisted.
If people want to go nuts (in a good way) squeezing as many accomplishments as they possibly can into the 44 days they get to invest in prepping for the competitions, the program doesn't need to try to hobble them, but that possible/optional aspect of the program shouldn't be the engine that pulls the train.
Be excellent for 44 days, then let the chips fall where they may.
Blake
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Blake Ross, For emailing me, in the verizon.net domain, I am blake
VRC Team Mentor, FTC volunteer, 5th Gear Developer, Husband, Father, Triangle Fraternity Alumnus (ky 76), U Ky BSEE, Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu, Kentucky Colonel
Words/phrases  I avoid: basis, mitigate, leveraging, transitioning, impact (instead of affect/effect), facilitate, programmatic, problematic, issue (instead of problem), latency (instead of delay), dependency (instead of prerequisite), connectivity, usage & utilize (instead of use), downed, functionality, functional, power on, descore, alumni (instead of alumnus/alumna), the enterprise, methodology, nomenclature, form factor (instead of size or shape), competency, modality, provided(with), provision(ing), irregardless/irrespective, signage, colorized, pulsating, ideate
Last edited by gblake : 18-11-2015 at 21:28.
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